Walter Finch
A recent conviction sending infamous expat Jody Smart to prison casts a glimmer of light at the end of the long dark tunnel in the €35 million Continental Wealth Management scandal
WHEN a court on the Costa Blanca dismissed a case against the bosses behind the Continental Wealth Management (CWM) fraud in 2023, the Olive Press couldn’t find a single victim willing to talk.
All too exhausted after years of private litigation in one of Spain’s greatest expat scandals, they declined to even comment on their devastation.
The Denia court had ruled there was ‘insufficient evidence’ to prosecute four executives of the ‘independent offshore investment company’.
Years of careful legal preparation showing how thousands of victims had collectively lost €35 million euros when CWM collapsed in 2017, apparently went down the drain.
Meanwhile the crooks who stole their retirement savings looked to have gotten away with it, as they lorded it from their multi-million euro mansions in the Javea hills or exclusive beach clubs.
One of those laughing all the way to the bank was a small-time TV presenter and glamour model going at that time by the name of Jody Kirby.
She was listed as the sole director of Continental Wealth Trust, the successor company after CWM was wound up by her ex-partner Darren Kirby, a financial advisor from Henley, in the UK.
While Darren fled to Australia and later Cambodia, and somehow avoided prosecution to end up back in the UK, Jody stayed in Valencia.
Changing her name to Jody Bell and then to Jody Smart, she eventually became Jody Pearson, when she married an actual chef Franco Pearson, who was also based on the Costa Blanca.
She had already launched a fashion label, Jody Bell London, through the money she made from CWM and was even making regular trips, business class, of course, to promote it in New York, Miami and Milan.
During saccharine promotional videos she bragged of her friendship with celebrities, including Denise Van Outen, and opened up her wardrobe to show off her hundreds of pairs of shoes and thousand-euro frocks.
Boasting of her glamorous lifestyle on Instagram where she dubbed herself a ‘yogi/fashionista/wedding planner/’, she told her 9,000 followers about her trips to Thailand, Puerto Rico and Dubai, over an extraordinary 2,600 posts.
Using her upmarket Oceana beach club as a base, she organised weddings and tried to reinvent herself as a philanthropist and entrepreneur, egged on by close friends who gushed about her business acumen and ‘big heart’.
For the victims though – many of them ruined and with an uncertain future in old age – there was to be some sweet vengeance.
For like a bolt from the blue, they received news, via the Olive Press, that Jody had been convicted of fraud in an Alicante court last month.
A three-and-a-half year jail sentence for Jody was like a gift from providence for the victims who had long resigned themselves to the innate cruelty of the world.
While the first judge in a Denia court failed to wrap his head around the enormous, multinational complexities of the scandal – or didn’t want to – the National Court of Alicante had no problems in finding Jody guilty in a smaller case hived off from the main prosecution.
It was a joint prosecution brought by three separate victims, although tragically the most affected, Mark Davison, who lost nearly a million euros, died before the verdict.
“I think the difference between this case where Jody was found guilty and 2023 was this one was nice and simple,” pension campaigner Angie Brooks told the Olive Press.
Granada-based Brooks has dedicated years to help compile the case against CWM on behalf of victim groups.
Alongside various Spanish lawyers, she is now compiling a much larger case against other executives behind the fraud, while she is aware of various separate cases representing victims on the Isle of Man.
“In the recent case there was no need to explain complicated pension rules and trusts and insurance bonds. They simply took the money and kept it, and that was it,” she continued.
While Smart told the Olive Press, via a lawyer, the fraud was ‘a consequence of loans between individuals, in which my…signature does not appear’, the judge, Francisco Javier Guirau, waved it away.
In fact, he dismissed her entire defence, claiming her ex-lover Darren Kirby had ‘coercively’ taken advantage of her ignorance to make her the sole administrator of the company – and set her up as the fall guy.
In his verdict he wrote that Jody had ‘closed her eyes to the fraudulent activities of Kirby… because she was benefiting personally and handsomely.’
And indeed she had. Despite her protestations, Jody had not raised the alarm when receiving over €2 million in transfers over the space of two years from a Continental Wealth Trust bank account.
Exactly €652,800 winged its way into the accounts of her fashion label, Jody Bell, between 2015 and 2017.
And, according to bank statements presented to the court, a further €1.34 million landed in her property company, Mercurio Compro, during the same period.
As well as facing prison, Jody was ordered to pay €70,000 to one victim defrauded through a sham loan agreement and €300,000 to another who was tricked into buying a property from CWM that was not even theirs to sell.
It marks an ignominious fall from grace for the costa socialite, who freely admitted in 2017 that ‘although I work in finance, I’m not a qualified financial adviser’.
By several accounts, she started life in Spain ‘cleaning the pool and toilets’ at the Oliva villa of Darren Kirby’s brother Patrick in 2011.
Darren immediately fell in love and quickly took her off scrubbing to promote her to a job at the CWM headquarters, near Denia.
But aside from giving her a job in his office he – crucially – convinced her to sign the documents that would see her wind up owning a tonne of assets. It would, however, also eventually get her convicted in 2025.
The Olive Press established during a long investigation that CWM had started operating on the Costa Blanca around 2011.
While we only started exposing their fraudulent activity in 2017, the first reports of clients losing their life savings came as early as 2012.
It was Angie Brooks’ company Pension Life, based out of Lanjaron, that first started to hear the horror stories.
READ MORE: Shock for hundreds of expat victims as court dismisses giant €35 million CWM pension fraud case
She told the Olive Press one couple, named only as ‘Pete and Val’, were convinced to lump their entire pension pot into a high-risk QROPS (Qualifying Recognising Overseas Pension Scheme) by seasoned operator Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions.
The former British government pensions advisor, who has a Florida real estate empire, did not work for CWM.
However, ‘his company was accused of scores of transfers of retirement funds on its behalf’.
They were largely disastrous. In the case of ‘Pete’ a CWM investment of £250,000, was soon worth only £93,000 – meaning a loss of 63%. While Val’s was ‘even more catastrophic’ dropping from £280,000 to just £50,000. Together, they lost over half a million of their pension savings, despite having indicated a ‘low-to-medium’ risk preference.
Shamefully, they allegedly used a range of dubious shady tactics, including even asking a client to sign and return a blank dealing instruction.
One British victim, who lost €200,000, told the Olive Press: “My paperwork that I sent was altered, my risk changed from medium to high risk and my dealing instructions were photocopied repeatedly buying and selling assets I didn’t authorise.”
He added: “Some people have lost everything and don’t have enough to live on. One person only has €50,000 left from €480,000.”
Marbella-based lawyer Antonio Flores, of Lawbird, who was representing various victims, said signing blank sheets was ‘very worrying’.
“This negates the very essence of financial advisory services,” he said.
And while the CWM clients’ life savings tanked catastrophically in risky insurance bonds and other financial vehicles, bosses took up to 8% in commissions and fees each year.
But a series of clever and tactical payouts meant that victims, the majority expats based in Spain, kept coming to them with their life savings in a scam that had all the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.
The money was really rolling in, millions of euros each year, in fact, and Kirby and his colleagues including Alan Gorringe, now dead, Dennis Radford, Paul Clarke and Ward, who was based in Moraira, were living high on the hog.
That was until, suddenly, at the end of 2017, clients received notice from Momentum Pensions Malta, the trustee company responsible for safeguarding and administering the pension funds, that CWM had ceased trading.
And then the dominoes started to tumble.
How did they think they could get away with it?
“People like Jody, Darren and co never really thought more than the next step, which is ‘I want to get my hands on the money, I don’t really care what happens, because all I want is the money, and I want it now’,” reflected Brooks this week.
“There’s no thought given to what’s going to happen to the victim,” she continued. “Because they’re not very bright, they don’t think ahead to what could happen to them, either.”
She added the philosophy of the CWM team was simple: “’I’ve taken money off this guy, and I know he’s never going to get it back, but I don’t care, as long as I get money to feed my coke habit, my champagne habit, my Jimmy Choo habit.’ That’s really all they thought about.”
While Jody is currently appealing her sentence, it’s highly doubtful she’ll be able to convince the judge she doesn’t bear responsibility as the sole administrator for the fraudulent actions of her company.
Meanwhile, a new ensemble of lawyers in Madrid has been instructed on a fresh round of legal action against Jody, Darren and the remaining culprits, many who still remain at large on the Spanish costas.
Only time will tell, but finally, at least, some justice is being served.
